Construction Ahead!

Tuesday, May 30th, 2017

The time has come to enter yet another phase of construction for the studio. This phase will see the addition of the floating floors as well as finished doors for the control room, back hall and main iso booth. After that is complete, the rig will get reassembled into its final form which will be better than ever and construction will begin on the live room adding the rest of the planned iso booths and more to be revealed in the future. Please stay tuned for exciting updates to come. In the meantime I have recently completed albums from Coyote – Fool’s Gold, Stereo Side Effect – Self Titled, and Bird’s Eye – Self Titled. All three bands have put in tremendous efforts to their respective releases and all are fantastic records that deserve to be heard, so please go see these bands live and pick up their CDs. I promise you it is worth it.

Local Love Fest 2017

Friday, February 3rd, 2017

It’s that time of year again!! Getting the details put together for what appears to be another great year for Local Love Fest with Brad now and a few bands have already signed up to record. Looking forward to getting to work with another great groups of artists and musicians. I believe there are still a few spots left up for grabs so contact Brad Van on Facebook if you are interested on getting on this years comp.

Edit: Thank you again to all the bands that participated in this year’s Local Love Fest Compilation. It was another fantastic year of amazing covers, I look forward to next years disc.

In other news the studio gear update continues, I am finally getting through the majority of my wish list so the gear updates will start to become less and less over the course of this year. Since my last post I have swapped out the Antelope Satori monitoring controller for a Grace m905 unit. The Satori is a very nice unit indeed but the lack of digital IO was becoming a restriction for me and I found a great deal on the digital equipped Grace unit. The m905 has made everything so much easier for me to manage and the USB port for the Mac Pro playback is second to none. Very happy with the Grace m905; I can’t see myself ever upgrading again.

With the Grace came the need for a new sub as the Grace didn’t have LFE support like the Satori did. I opted for the ADAM Sub12 and wow does that sub kick some serious ass, flat down to 22hz!! I can’t even imagine mixing without it now.

I managed to pick myself up a Native Instruments Komplete Kontrol S61, setup was a little interesting to say the least, I am still working out some minor bugs but I believe this will be a killer MIDI controller when I get past it; it certainly looks cool..

At Christmas time I saw UAD was having a major bundle sale, any 10 plugins for $1,000. So I nabbed 11 plugins, and with the coupon codes I had still, got quite the deal on some amazing plugins. My favorite of the bunch so far are, Ocean Way Room Modeler, Chandler Curve Bender, Manley Massive Passive, AMS digital reverberator, Thermionic Culture Vulture and the API channel strip. My UAD collection is starting to feel complete. I noticed I was using a lot of DSP resources on the OCTO card so I nabbed a Satellite Quad to help offset the load a little. UAD really does make some of the best plugins on the market.

I picked up a matched stereo set of Coles 4038 ribbon mics, these are BBC designed mics that are renowned for their sound. Indeed the few items I have used them on so far have proven them to be quite exquisite. I tracked some acoustic guitar and was blown away by the imaging and the detail. I tried to use some of my favorite UAD plugins to see how they sat with the Coles Mics and in every single case, adding plugins seemed to take away from the richness of the sound. This was not expected and quite amazing as everything the UAD plugins touch seems to get enhanced. The Coles just sound so perfect on their own, it is very refreshing.

The last item is my new favorite, I somehow found an SPL MixDream 16:2 summing buss for less than most Dangerous 2bus devices go for. Money is a little tight at the moment but once I saw it I knew I had to have it, suffice to say, mixing on the MixDream is like a dream come true. I can understand why they choose that name, it really does make everything sound awesome. My only regret about purchasing it comes down to the fact that I plan to go back into build mode soon and won’t be able to use it much until I reassemble everything. Such is life though, it just is more incentive to get past the building phase once and for all. I will post more updates about the build out in the coming months but currently the plan is to wrap up all the current projects I have by end of March, start disassembly and cataloging, and start construction by second week of April. If all goes well (which it mostly likely won’t) I plan to be up and running again by end of July/Beginning of August. Stay Tuned

Upgrade Central

Sunday, September 25th, 2016

Some exciting new upgrades have passed the testing phase and I am happy to report everything is working beautifully. These upgrades include first and foremost a new 2013 Mac Pro (aka the trashcan), I have never used a faster machine for Pro Tools and the specs on this computer are ridiculous. That upgrade presented an issue with the UAD2-DUO card in testing, apparently the DUO card is not compatible with the new Mac Pro, I had to upgrade the the OCTO card. With that came some great coupons that convinced me to grab a few additional plugins, damn you UAD!! I was also able to pick up a pick up a Pro Tools | Dock and iPad2 Air to complete my control surface, it is much improved over the older Mix Control. I found a great David Eden bass rig online that sounds incredible and the great folks over at Madison Drum Makers have been super gracious to build me a custom Drum Kit for the studio. Last but certainly not least I grabbed the Slate Digital Virtual Microphone System. For those of you who have not heard yet it is a microphone emulation system that closely emulates some of the best microphones ever manufactured. Suffice to say, I have every vocal mic I have ever dreamed about owning right here in the vocal booth. Now to start paying off my poor credit cards, who’s interested in recording!!

Summer time

Thursday, July 7th, 2016

Just wanted to post a quick thank you to all of the bands who have come into the studio so far this summer. Shout out to the Dirt Bros, Stereo Side Effect, Cold Black River, The 4 Aspirin Morning, and Bird’s Eye. Together you have helped make this a fantastic summer for the studio as we slowly figure out the best workflow processes together. I really appreciate everyone’s time and hard work efforts, the results have been better than I had hoped for and I hope everyone enjoys the various recordings that will soon be released from the studio in time. Here’s looking forward to the future of Class A Studios and Detune Audio Productions. I can’t wait for more bands to come though the doors, Government Zero, I’m looking at you next 😉

-Dustin

Local Love Fest 2016

Tuesday, March 1st, 2016

The latest Local Love Fest CD has been finished and is available at this year’s shows at the High Noon and Crystal Corner Bar. I would like to thank all of the bands that recorded at the studio as well as the all the bands with self recorded submissions. You guys and gals are fantastic, I am honored to help serve this music community. I hope everyone enjoyed their time in making this and are enjoying the final product. Looking forward to next year.

Studio is currently in light operational mode

Saturday, February 27th, 2016

After quite the construction phase, Detune Audio Productions is once again booking studio time.

Though not entirely finished with construction, the studio has been reconnected and is better than ever. the plan is to pay off the construction debt for this previous build-out and save up a little capital for the next phase. (tentatively planned for late summer/early fall 2016) Bands have been booked through March and most of April but smaller sessions may be available upon request.